The French studio Don’t Nod is currently in trouble after the Chinese company Tencent withdrew its investment in their projects.
French studio Don’t Nod Entertainment it is reportedly in danger of collapse if it does not find new investors by the end of this year.
Until now, the studio had an investor in a Chinese corporation Tencentbut it seems that they have turned their backs on them and no longer plan to co-finance their games. As Don’t Nod has not launched a commercially successful game for years, it is said that without new investments they could go bankrupt in half a year.
Don’t Nod Entertainment has been around for 18 years, and in that time they’ve released 11 games. We know them from the series of narrative adventures Life is Strangewhich they parted ways with in 2019 and left it to the publishing house Square Enix.
Since then, Don’t Nod has tried to recapture the magic of the Life is Strange games in other titles such as Tell Me Why and Lost Records: Bloom & Rage. Unfortunately, all these attempts were unsuccessful, at least from the commercial side.
This year Don’t Nod launched the sci-fi adventure Aphelion which went unnoticed, much like Banishers: Ghost of New Eden from 2024. Do you remember Jusant or Twin Mirror? Probably not.
It is worth noting that Don’t Nod entered into a partnership with Netflix at the end of 2025in order to create a narrative adventure in a well-known franchise, but it is possible that Netflix’s investments are not enough to keep the 300-employee studio alive.
However, the studio has not closed yet, who knows – maybe they will manage to find a new investor?